The sheer volume of work might initially overwhelm, yet while there are a colossal number of exhibits covering painting, sculpture, tapestry, photographs, book illustration, furniture, glass and print this collection offers the chance to get up close, move between the works and make connections of meaning in new ways.

It is perfectly possible to rekindle the faded fascination for one of the most popular of British art movements, perhaps best known for the sensual allure of the rehashed medieval and renaissance styles of the pre-Raphaelite “brotherhood,” with their chaste – and not so chaste – love scenes and mythical content.

That’s reflected in the categories of history, nature, beauty, paradise, mythology and salvation and it is the latter room that proves to be the most exciting, overlooked at it is at one end by the exhibition’s best painting.

Technically accurate, realist in execution but much derided at the time Christ In The House Of His Parents by John Everett Millais is, once stripped of its religious symbolism, really about family, the workshop, and the child being tended to with a parent’s bended knee and a craftsman’s fatherly touch.

Resting inconspicuously among the paintings of torment and fictional love, pious religiosity and falsified histories derived from myth, there are three paintings by Ford Madox Brown that give the exhibition its strongest and only point of real contact between art and social reality.

In Last Of England it is the gaze of a husband and wife that tells a foreboding story of economic migration.

Both stare into the distance, their trepidation masked by resolution on his part and resignation on hers.

Both are setting out to make a better life with their child, away from England’s pretty but unyielding shores.

In Work, another Madox Brown canvas, the toil and to a certain degree the dignity of road workers is given credence. Albeit in a grotesque style, this busy scene comes alive with the paymaster, the exploiter, lurking in the shadows.

A poverty-stricken child lies on the road and a theologian and writer observe the spectacle, no doubt making ready to give earnest comment from pulpit and page about the navvies and their hard labour.

These works are laden with the artists’ symbols and signs all present in one image. This makes the “reading” of a particular painting less like the linear experience to be found in most poetry, novels or films. It’s more akin to the process of digitally decoding a screen where all the symbols are instantaneously present in a single frame.

A prominent feature in the exhibition is the representation of the “women of the brotherhood” as variously empowered, exploited or victim.

The powerful and wonderfully unfinished Take Your Son, Sir, also by Madox Brown, begs the question of how the ashen-faced woman, in the near-death exhaustion of childbirth, opens herself and gives the child to the “Sir” of the canvas’s title.

There are water colours too by Elizabeth Elenor Siddal, in themselves an empowering and unique inclusion, as are the works of other female Pre-Raphaelites, substantiating the claim that there was an active Pre-Raphaelite “sisterhood” running alongside the “brotherhood.”

Typically John Everett Millais‘ tragic and ethereal Ophelia, with Siddal as the suffering muse and model, is an example of the brotherhood’s obsessive fear of the passive, tragic female and this is echoed in William Holman Hunt‘s The Awakening Conscience as the “disobedient” kept woman rejects the lap of a bemused “gentleman.”

Gabriel Dante Rossetti‘s Mary in The Annunciation recoils and turns her hips away from the symbol of God’s intent and in Lady Lilith and Beata Beatrix female strength is captured in powerful neck lines.

But in Found the control fetish reasserts itself as the “caring” male wrests the fallen woman, a victim of city life, away from the compassion of her former man from the countryside.

For Edward Burne-Jones the effect of female presence in Doom Fulfilled is manifest in the demure skin tones of the woman subject, with her nonchalant gaze set against the coiling violent rapture of a shining armour-clad Perseus attacking a sinuous, erect and snarling serpent of the same colour as his armour.

What impresses in this exhibition is how it demonstrates the value of fine art as an enabling form of visual literacy for all to experience and use as a tool to decode society with.

That education may be currently be a middle-class preserve but this exhibition eloquently demonstrates why an understanding of visual language is of value to all.

When women’s activists began their struggle for improved rights in the mid-’70s they were working within a violently divided community.

Some nationalist and republican women were opposed to demanding abortion rights from a foreign British government. The suffrage movement faced similar objections at the beginning of the 20th century.

Yet women, and some men, have been successful in establishing various campaigns to change the law in Ireland.

In 1971 women activists organised the “condom train” to challenge the ban that then existed on contraceptives in the republic.

Women bought contraceptives over the counter in Belfast and returned with them by train to Dublin’s Connolly station, where they threw their contraband at customs guards and Garda Siochana in defiance of the laws of the land.

In the early ’80s I remember standing in Dundalk with some other sisters handing out condoms to bemused passers-by, again in contravention of the law.

In 1980 the Health and Family Planning Bill became law, allowing most married couples access to the pill.

And five years later condoms became legal to buy in the republic – but even then chemists could decide whether or not to stock the offending articles.

However, that same year the Irish constitution was amended to give foetuses the “right to life,” solidifying the ban on abortion.

Abortion remains illegal under any circumstances in the republic, but in 2010 the European courts accused Ireland of contravening international human rights laws for its refusal to permit abortions if the mother’s life is at risk.

The report is still pending, but whatever its findings it will be controversial.

Campaigners recognise that, amid the heated debate, the most practical option is to call for parity of rights with women in Britain.

Even in the North women do not have this parity. The Unionist government at Stormont refused to implement the 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised abortions by registered practitioners via the NHS.

Just as the unionists decided not to introduce comprehensive education and abolish the 11-plus, they want to be British only when it suits them.

Women’s reproductive rights are a highly sensitive subject and abortion law reform is not a vote-catcher in Ireland, north or south.

In the mid-’80s Sinn Fein came close to supporting that too, but then changed its policy and now describes itself as a “pro-life party” along with the DUP and SDLP.

Indeed, it is only in relatively recent times that some trade unions have adopted pro-choice policies.

However, contrary to popular belief, abortion is not an illegal act in the North.

Surgical abortions can be carried out on the NHS in Northern Ireland but doctors have to first agree that a woman meets the legal criteria.

Abortion is available if a woman’s life or her long-term physical or mental health are considered to be at risk, but the law is still unclear and the medical profession has asked for better guidelines.

And Northern Ireland recently saw the opening of its first private abortion clinic, which is run by the charity Marie Stopes.

The Belfast clinic provides medical abortion tablets for women who have been pregnant for nine weeks or less, though it does not provide surgical abortions.

With the establishment of the new clinic all kinds of maggots have wriggled out of their holes.

One anti-abortionist asked how much profit the clinic would make, while another challenged the salary of the clinic’s director Dawn Purvis.

It is doubtful if such critics are truly concerned about the evils of private medical provision – a far better stance would be to get out campaigning for a change in law to allow access to NHS facilities.

This is the position of the CPI, which welcomes the new clinic, but also believes that women should have access to decent state care, not just in abortion provision but also in family planning and sex education. This is the way forward for a society that values its women and their lives.

Herbivores (species that eat plants; e.g. caterpillars) consume more non-native (introduced from other places) oak leaf material in areas with diverse native plant communities than in less diverse communities. Why diverse plant communities tend to resist invasion by non-native plants, remains uncertain. Researchers from the Illinois Natural History Survey and the Morton Arboretum have been examining the potential role of herbivores on the invasion of non-native plant species in diverse plant communities. Read more here.

International scientists have developed a database with in-depth information on over 600 plant species, including the black pine, prickly cactus, thyme, milkweed, wild garlic and baby root orchid. Called the “COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database“, it is currently the world’s largest open-access source of endangered, native and feral plant demographics. Read more here.

My latest piece I wrote for Freedom magazine, published in the October issue. On migrant workers’ conditions in Qatar, where the World Cup of 2022 is supposed to be held. Basically the original version, but with a few small corrections.

One of the Arab countries apparently almost untouched by the Arab Spring is Qatar. The tide of protest and revolt more or less passed this Emirate by. The main news channel spreading attention to these events, Aljazeera, is Qatari-based and regime-owned, which does not help to raise attention to what happens there. But even without willful media neglect, not much news would come out of there – because nothing much spectacular is happening there.

This is changing, and the reason is sports. The country will host the 2012 football World Cup, ten years from now. Ten years of frantic commercial building, investing in sports accommodation and facilities. Who will do all this building? Not the Emir and his family. Not the Qatari citizens: they are a relatively affluent minority in the country, with limited civil rights, and a welfare system funded by Qatar’s abundant oil riches. The rest are migrant workers, 94 percent of the labour force of Qatar. These migrants – plus a million more to be recruited – are going to build the stadiums, the sports facilities, the accommodation for the football extravaganza.

These migrant workers, mainly from South Asia, live and work under terrible circumstances of exploitation and neglect. Under a system of sponsorship, the power to change jobs belongs to the companies these labourers work for. These sponsors decide whether the worker can leave the country, by withholding passports of migrants. Before a migrant even enters, he or she often has paid high recruitment fees, from several hundreds up to a few thousand dollars. They have to pay them back from their low wages, which means debt.

Sponsorship, and therefore company control, combined with recruitment-induced debt, means that migrants are forced into working and living conditions amounting to forced labour. Abuse, beatings, sexual assault is the natural product of such a system of almost absolute employers’ control, which also sees the non-payment of wages and horrendous housing conditions in prison-like barracks. A modern-day commercial sport event is being prepared by modern-day slavery. Reading a Human Rights Watch report, or seeing video reports by Equal Times, an NGO, makes clear how it all works, and how it destroys lives by exploitation and systematic maltreatment. They make painful reading and watching.

The regime pretends to abide to international labour law, there even are ‘labour unions’. But the right of strike and anything like serious workers’ organizational rights are lacking. Resistance is extremely risky. “We don’t complain, because if we complain for anything, the company will kick us out”, as a migrant worker from Nepal explains.

HRW and Equal Times are pushing the issue of migrant workers’ maltreatment into the limelight, lobbying with the organizational committee and FIFA, international trade union movementITUC and the ILO. Government and FIFA promises have been made, but progress along that line can not be more that limited. There is too much money at stake to be hindered by the demand for necessary but costly improvements. Things will change – after the spirit of revolt engulfing the region finally reaches the building sites and workers’ barracks of that exploiters’ paradise called Qatar.

On November 13 and 14, the UNNOH (Union Nationale des Normaliens Haïtiens), which represents graduates of Haitian teachers colleges, staged a strike featuring nine demands. The union was also protesting a new 2 percent tax on salaries planned by the government.

Notable among the strikers’ demands are the establishment of a cholera vaccination program in schools and colleges. As of November 7, the cholera epidemic has killed more than 7,600 Haitians, including almost 600 children under the age of five, according to the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population.

The union is also demanding the creation of cafeterias serving hot meals in all schools and colleges, pointing to the importance of physical health and nutrition in the learning process.

In terms of economic demands, the strikers are fighting for a minimum monthly wage of 50,000 gourdes (approximately US $1,200) plus benefits, the full payment of all teachers’ salaries currently in arrears, the dedication of 30 percent of the national budget to K-12 education, and the commitment of 4 percent of the national budget to public higher education. According to the UNNOH’s statistics, this latter category currently receives only 0.55 percent of the public budget.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the union called on teachers, professors, students, parents, administrators, and other unions to join it in order to “finally obtain from the State the total satisfaction of these demands,” according to Le Nouvelliste.

…

The strike was originally planned for October, but postponed because of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in Haiti. Events continue to overtake the plans of the UNNOH, as street demonstrations are erupting in Port-au-Prince over the shooting death of a college student by a police cadet.

On the night of November 10, 24-year-old Damaël D’Haiti attended a party traditionally held each fall to welcome newly admitted students to the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences at the State University of Haiti. Damaël, who was close to finishing his own education, was shot in the head by Pierre Paul Masséus, for reasons which are still “under investigation.” Masséus is a member of the most recent class promoted from the police academy.

Protests erupted in Port-au-Prince the day after the murder, and continued into a fourth day on Wednesday.

A video clip on the web site of Le Nouvelliste showed peaceful protesters chanting for justice as they ran past an army vehicle in the street. However, police fired teargas as well as live ammunition, causing 50 people—including school children—to faint, and protesters constructed barricades in some streets.

The administration of the UEH (l’Universite d’Etat d’Haiti, or State University of Haiti) closed the school for 24 hours on Tuesday in protest of the murder. The university’s hospital stayed open, treating many victims of the tear gas attacks and one student shot in the arm.

Haitian President Michel Martelly, already the subject of protests because of food shortages, corruption, and abuses of power, now confronts challenges to what was supposed to be his great accomplishment: the reform of the country’s education system, including the implementation of his campaign promises of free public education for all. Even after his election, Martelly promoted himself as the first Haitian President able to accomplish this historic feat.

To that end, the government established the FNE (Fonds National pour l’Education, or National Education Fund), to be paid for by a 5 cent per minute fee on all telephone calls coming into the country and a US $1.50 transaction fee on all incoming remittances from Haitians living abroad. The FNE also receives contributions from the International Monetary Fund, the International Development Bank, and the World Bank.

Given that close to 90 percent of Haiti’s K-12 education happens in private and religious schools, such a program is ripe for profit seekers.

On a web site promoting the program, the Martelly government promised that 350,000 students would benefit in the first year (2011-2012). 1.5 million students were supposed to receive funding by the end of his five-year term as president. However, an August 2012 IMF report found that only 165,500 children had benefitted in the first year, and that the amounts of support were negligible: US $90 for children attending private schools, and only $6 for those in public schools.

In the wake of the 2010 earthquake, food shortages, and two hurricanes this year, the country’s education system is grossly underfunded. The government was forced to put off the start of classes—originally scheduled for September 3—until October 1 this year, and threatened to penalize any schools which charged parents for the month of September.

Thank you, Miss Marzipan of the blog of the same name, for nominating Dear Kitty. Some blog for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award!

The rules of this award are:

1- Display the award logo on your blog
2- Link back to the person who nominated you.
3- State seven things about yourself.
4- Nominate fifteen other bloggers for this award and link to them.
5- Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

The seven things about myself are:

1. When I was small, I used to walk to primary school.

2. In winter, on a meadow on the way to school, there were redwings: the start of my interest in birds.

3. Later, I went on bicycle to the secondary school, which was further away than the primary school.

4. Once, in winter, the road was icy, and my bicycle fell.

5. I used to have very good grades in biology at secondary school, when it was mainly about systematic zoology.

6. Later, when the biology lessons became more about biochemistry, my grades became less good.

7. Last week, my telephone suddenly stopped working and started buzzing, but the problem is solved now.